From the Editor: The Starlink Conundrum

By Wendy Mitman Clarke SAIL Editor-in-Chief

November 7, 2024

This is the column where I hopelessly date myself, and it came to me in the weirdest place—the short passage just beyond the bar at The Black Pearl in Newport, Rhode Island. I was in town for the Newport Boat Show in September, making the annual trek for my favorite chowder, when memory slammed into me.

“Hi, Mom! I’m here, we’re all OK, it was a great race!”

I was on a pay phone in that dark little hallway, calling my parents to let them know I was safe and sound after sailing in the 475-mile Annapolis-Newport Race. It had been a great race—we’d sailed well and earned silver, but even better, we’d had a blast. The rest of the crew were in the bar, telling stories and laughing all over again, and it was hard to hear my mom on the other end of the line. But after days of having no contact with land, the sense of adventure that had begun when we cast off was complete when I put the coins in the phone and called home.

And I can’t help wondering—do people feel this same sense of adventure, the uniqueness of being in this special world of water and sky, when they’re sitting in a Zoom meeting for work via Starlink while sailing through an ocean?

This is the sort of philosophical question that Hugo Kugiya poses in his story in our November/December issue about how Starlink has completely changed how we communicate when sailing our boats now. With every astonishing advance in technology, there’s something left behind—often for totally legit reasons, but left behind, nonetheless. And since I’m old enough to remember calling my mom on a pay phone after an offshore race, I clearly fall into the group he describes that regards Starlink with a kind of awe mingled with nostalgia and maybe a little wariness.

When my family and I left to go cruising full-time in 2008, the iPhone was just a year old. On passages, our comms home consisted of emails I’d write and send via SailMail on a Pactor modem with our single sideband. Nearly all of our long-distance communications with other sailors came via that same SSB—morning weather with Chris Parker of Marine Weather Center, where folks would jump on ahead of the broadcast to check in with each other, and a variety of cruiser’s nets that served as safety and info central depending on where you were. These nets generated a great sense of community, and SSB etiquette also encouraged mutual support; when one boat’s transmission wasn’t getting through, for instance, another who could hear them would offer to “relay” and send the comms along, acting as an intermediary.

It took me a while to get the hang of the SSB, to learn when I could get on a particular frequency depending on propagation. It wasn’t simple. Despite that—or perhaps because of it—mastering the skill was deeply satisfying. And maybe it sounds ridiculous, but it felt like part of the adventure of doing what we were doing. It wasn’t like being on land and picking up the phone. It was anything but.

Now comes Starlink, an absolute revolution that makes communicating while sailing pretty much just like picking up the phone. As Hugo relates, it has literally made sailing dreams come true for people who now can work remotely while cruising full-time, far earlier in their careers than would have been possible before. It has changed the game in terms of safety offshore, when groups of sailors in rallies or races can communicate quickly and clearly via WhatsApp or even Facebook to help someone in trouble. As an editor, it’s enabled me to work with writers while they’re in mid-passage, rather than waiting weeks to hear from them.

And just this morning, my son texted me a hundred miles offshore while he and his dad are helping deliver a friend’s boat. He gave me their position and a brief report, plus a nice photo of the Gulf Stream. Though the boat’s Starlink is only turned on a couple times a day to save battery power (that’s one downside to the units, they are energy hogs), it’s helping them stay on top of some complex weather and letting me know where they are since their AIS transceiver hasn’t been updating properly.

So, am I glad they have Starlink? Absolutely. Would I want it on passage? Most likely. We all can’t be as blissfully self-contained as Bernard Moitessier was during the first Golden Globe, slingshotting his updates in a film cannister to a passing ship. And anyway, it would seem that resistance is futile. All the same, I’ll be keeping that SSB handy, even if just for the romance—and the backup.

Keep on sailing,
Wendy
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